Present day smart devices such as smartphones, notebooks, and tablets, are now capable of performing multiple tasks such as sending and receiving e-mail and other messages, maintaining a schedule of meetings and events, multimedia calling, multimedia messaging, gaming, capturing images and videos, social networking, and online shopping, in addition to traditional voice calling. Typically, many of these tasks are performed through applications available on the smart devices. The application(s) also notify a user of the smart device events such as incoming calls, received e-mail or multimedia messages, reminders for calendared events, and updates from social network, by way of notification messages, audio alerts, and vibration.
Various solutions are now available that provide notifications by way of light sources such as light-emitting diodes (LEDs) coupled to the smart devices. In one solution, application can be downloaded into the smart device. The application controls the color of LED is accordance with various application and system events based on user settings.
In another solution, the mobile device gathers user's context information from different sources based on user preference or setting. Examples of the context information include ambient light information, tactile information, ambient noise information, accelerometer information, orientation information, calendar information, a user location, a time of day and a date. Examples of the sources include sensors and calendar program. Based on the context information, notification behavior of the mobile device modified. Examples of the notification behavior includes disabling the notification, lowering a volume of the notification, raising the volume of the notification, entering a silent mode, entering a vibrate-only mode, emitting a beep from the mobile device, causing a display screen on the mobile device to flash, and causing an LED on the mobile device to blink.
In one another solution, a color scheme is used to communicate information associated with an event. The event can be incoming calls, incoming call from specific callers, elapsed time, guiding or helping user to perform certain task on the computing device. The color scheme communicates information related to a functional feature of the computing device, personal preferences or brand extension. The color scheme can be associated with the event by the user or can be pre-associated by a service provider. Upon detecting the occurrence of the event, the hardware elements of the computing device such as buttons, keypad, soft keys, and LED, and software elements of the computing device such as contact list entry and color shown on display, are illuminated according to color scheme.
In one another solution, notifications are generated based on one or more environmental conditions such as noisy, quiet, dark, well-lit, vibrations of a mobile computing device, movements of the mobile computing device, sensed the mobile computing device. The notifications can also be based on information related to one or more applications such as email application, word processing application, and synchronization application, that run on the mobile computing device. The mobile device can also detect non-environmental inputs from the user such as tapping the device, moving the device in a particular manner, holding the device, and voice commands, and ignore them in determining parameters of the notifications. The mobile computing device selects one or more output devices such as light sources, speakers, vibration, headset, wireless and earpiece, based on the environment and/or applications to generate the notifications.
In one another solution, backlight of a sub liquid crystal display (LCD) or the backlight of a keypad of terminal are controlled to display various states, such as the residual of a battery, a received signal strength indicator (RSSI), etc., so that a weak-eyed user can easily recognize the states of the terminal.
In another solution, a handheld mobile communication device includes a single notification element and a microprocessor for controlling the single notification element such that the single notification element presents a temporal color pattern to indicate a state of the handheld mobile communication device. The single notification point can be a plurality of light emitting diodes packaged together and can be placed on the top of the device to quickly convey information to a user without the user being required to remove the device from a carrying case. The color pattern is used to alert a user of the device of: a proximate wireless communication connection engaged with another device using a predetermined protocol; a distant wireless communication connection established with a base station; a received message; and a low charge on the battery.
In another solution, a mobile terminal outputs different notification signals according to different type of events. The mobile terminal includes a terminal body; a display which is disposed on the front surface of the body and outputs visual information; physical buttons arranged to be adjacent to the display; and a light source which is arranged in the terminal and outputs light to the physical buttons. The mobile terminal further includes a processor, which controls the pattern of the light output from the light source to output different notification information according to the type of events generated by the terminal.
In one another solution, optical output device(s) coupled to a mobile terminal, that emits light with at least one color, is controlled based on information obtained from various sources. The optical output device can be provided at a front side and/or a rear side of the mobile terminal. A processor controls the optical output device by controlling an emitting color, an emitting duration, and an emitting pattern according to the obtained information and/or user-settings. The information can be stock information, health information, appearance of persons(s) in captured images, user's clothes, user's voice, brightness of surroundings, ambient color, received calls, received messages, and received e-mails, number of and frequency of received calls, received messages, and received e-mails.
In one another solution, a mobile terminal is mounted with a cover to cover a display of the mobile terminal. The cover is provided with a window portion to display the visual information of the display while covering the display, and the cover is formed to output the illuminated notification light at a boundary of the window portion. A processor in the terminal controls the display to illuminate notification light on the window portion in a specific pattern when an event occurs while the display is deactivated and the covered. Examples of the event, but not limited to, includes receiving a call, receiving a message, notifications from application(s), battery charge amount of the mobile terminal is less than a predetermined reference value, and mobile terminal gets out of or into a wireless communication network. Further, when there exists a plurality of events, the processor may partition an outer circumference of the window portion into a plurality of regions based on the number of the plurality of events. Furthermore, the processor may control the display such that a notification light with different colors is output around the plurality of partitioned regions. The cover is further configured to sense a user's touch input in response to the pattern generation. Based on the touch input, event information corresponding to the occurred even is displayed. Event information may be brief information including at least one of a name of the application that has generated an event and a graphic image representing the application, detailed information including the content of the generated event, or the like.
In one another solution, a lighting device is provided in an air conditioner that displays illumination patterns based on predetermined functions and at scheduled time. The lightening device can have plurality of light source elements such as an LED and LCD, substantially arranged in along a circle 0 formation. The illumination patterns are provided by controlling lighting conditions such as color, brightness, order of turning on/off, and duration of the plurality of LEDs. Examples of the predetermined functions can be active lighting according to a surrounding environment at a time of turning on, information description lighting, therapy lighting, mood lighting, and obzee description lighting.
In one another solution, an indicator or LED is placed on front side of an image capturing apparatus. The image capturing apparatus detects faces in captured image; and the indicator responsive to face detection indicates that the image capture device has captured a face.
In another solution, a camera provides a function for self-photographing that a self-photographer cannot only determine whether or not he or she is within the angle of view but can also determine his or her position within the angle of view more accurately than in the prior art. Accordingly, the camera comprising an indicator, and an optical path regulating member that allows, during self-photographing, a photographer to view the indicator with information on the photographer's own position within the photographing angle of view.
In one another solution, an electronic device such as a mobile includes a detection algorithm to determine when a camera lens of the electronic device is properly oriented to capture an item (e.g., a face in a self-portrait). The detection algorithm identifies specific faces or objects, and can directs the electronic device to automatically store a captured image in response to detecting objects or faces of interest. In some embodiments, a motion-sensing component can be used to help align the lens.
As can be gathered from above, the present solutions only provide different types of visual notification in form of illumination patterns through a light source embedded or integrated on the smart device such as mobile device and air conditioner. The visual notifications are generated based on occurrence of predefined event. However, the visual notifications only enable a user to identify certain event has occurred based on underlying application. These solutions do not provide any tangible information related to the event occurred through the visual notifications. Due to the reduced attention span, many of such visual notifications are missed. To overcome this deficiency, some solutions create notifications hierarchy is created based on time. However, since tangible information is not available, the user may not act on the notifications.
Some solutions also enable display of icons or information on display based on user-input such as touch, drag, and tap on the smart device. The user has to perform further action by following normal course of operations. Thus, the solutions utilize touch as the main input and the light sources serve as the output, hence a spatial discontinuity between the two spaces, user input being the main input while vision being the only output.
Thus, there exists a need for a better solution that overcomes the above-mentioned deficiencies.
The above information is presented as background information only to assist with an understanding of the present disclosure. No determination has been made, and no assertion is made, as to whether any of the above might be applicable as prior art with regard to the present disclosure.